Two days later the Eighth marched, with its corps, to the relief of Burnside, at Knoxville; took part in all the movements of that dreadful winter campaign, and formed a portion of the rear guard on the retreat from Dandridge.
Early in January, 1864, at Strawberry Plains, East Tennessee, four-fifths of all the members of the Eighth then present reënlisted as veterans. Returning home in February, the regiment received a furlough for thirty days. Reassembling at this Post, early in April, it returned to the South, and took part in the campaign against Atlanta. Thence, with its corps, it moved back to Nashville, and participated in the battle which ground the Rebel army of the West to atoms.
During the first six months of the year 1865, the Eighth was stationed at various points in Alabama and Tennessee, but late in July it was ordered to Texas, where it remained until the 29th of November, when it was mustered out, and ordered home for final discharge. It reached Fort Leavenworth on the 6th of January, 1866, and on the 9th was formally disbanded.
Its career, it will thus be seen, commenced at a very early period of the civil war, and terminated long after the last hostile shot had been fired. From the date of its organization until its final muster-out, there were 1,081 names on its rolls. But its largest numerical strength at any one time was 877, in March, 1862. The largest aggregate force, “present for duty,” was 656, at about the same date.
The records of its service show that it traveled 10,750 miles; participated in fifteen battles and many skirmishes; and lost in battle three commissioned officers and sixty-seven enlisted men killed; thirteen commissioned officers and two hundred and seventy-six enlisted men wounded; and one commissioned officer and twenty enlisted men missing; or a total of seventy killed, two hundred and eighty-nine wounded, and twenty-one missing; and an aggregate of three hundred and eighty killed, wounded and missing. Of the missing, nearly all were killed, and of the wounded about one-fifth died of their wounds. The regiment’s loss by the casualties of battle, it will thus be seen, was nearly sixty per cent. of the greatest number it ever had present for duty.
In addition to these losses three commissioned officers and ninety-two enlisted men died of disease; one hundred and ninety-two were discharged for disabilities resulting from wounds or disease; and fifty-three died of wounds. The total loss by death, including the seventy killed in battle, was two hundred and eighteen, and by discharge because of wounds and disease, one hundred and ninety-two, making a total loss, by death or disability, of four hundred and ten.
The regiment brought back to the State, and deposited at Topeka, three flags. Under the first, carried until it returned home on veteran furlough, in February, 1864, it marched 3,681 miles, and lost three commissioned officers and forty-nine enlisted men killed, ten commissioned officers and two hundred and eighteen enlisted men wounded, and twenty enlisted men missing. Under the second, carried until after the battle of Nashville, it marched 2,660 miles, and lost three commissioned officers wounded and one captured, and eighteen enlisted men killed and fifty-eight wounded. Under the third it traveled 4,409 miles, but sustained no loss in battle.
The largest loss the Eighth sustained in a single engagement was at Chicamauga, where out of a total of four hundred and six officers and men present, its killed, wounded and missing numbered two hundred and forty-three, or sixty per cent. of all engaged.
A brief, dull sketch this is of the services of the Eighth Kansas, I know. But I am anxious to condense it into as brief a space as possible; and dull as it is, it will revive in your memory a thousand thrilling recollections; meager as it is, it will give any soldier or any intelligent civilian who was an interested observer of the events of the war, a fairly comprehensive idea of the part the regiment bore in that great struggle. This is all I have sought to do. It would require volumes to tell the story in full. For this regiment not only saw all “the pomp and circumstance of war,” but all its ghastly desolation, misery and despair as well. It sounded all the notes alike of war’s pæan and of its dirge. The tramp of its swift and steady march echoed in the highways of twelve different States. Its bayonets flashed from Fort Laramie to the Gulf, and from Kansas to North Carolina. At Nashville it did duty in white gloves; at Strawberry Plains it was shirtless, shoeless, and in rags. It was feasted in Kansas and starved in Chattanooga. It hunted guerrillas in Missouri, combatted Longstreet’s veterans at Chicamauga, stormed the blazing heights of Mission Ridge, fought a continuous battle from Kennesaw Mountain to Atlanta, and broke the lines of Hood at Nashville. It built roads, bridged rivers, convoyed trains, destroyed railroads, operated mills, policed cities, gathered crops, and made history. And wherever it was, or whatsoever it was doing, the calm and patient endurance, the magnificent courage, the splendid discipline, and the unfaltering patriotism of its soldiers could always be relied on.
It is pleasant to remember, too, and I am sure there is no true soldier of the Eighth who will not proudly recall the fact, that on many different occasions the drill, discipline and military appearance of the regiment were complimented in official orders, issued from corps and army headquarters. At Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in June, 1863, the following order was published: